Carla Saulter has been living without a car—and using public transit as her primary form of transportation—since March of 2003. Though she gave up driving because of concerns about the detrimental effects of car culture (pollution, traffic, sprawl), the decision has profoundly and positively changed her life. Some of these positive changes include: enforced exercise, time to read, reduced expenses, and contact with her community on a level that would never have been possible in the isolated bubble of a single-occupancy vehicle.

Some historical perspective

From an article in the April, 1967 issue of the original Seattle Magazine (“Just This, or Rapid Transit, Too?”):

[Seattle Mayor] Braman makes it no secret that he wants to be remembered as the mayor who brought rapid transit to Seattle… His attempts to arouse public interest in the project date back to the spring of 1965…

If you want to get some real context, HistoryLink has several interesting articles about the history of transportation in Seattle. (You’ll find more if you use broader search terms than I did.) For a quick-and-dirty overview, they also have a nice, high-level timeline.